Jared Kushner’s lawyer gets pranked over private email

John SextonPosted at 5:01 pm on September 26, 2017

Politico reported Sunday that Jared Kushner had used a private email account for official business. Hillary Clinton was quick to jump on this report as if it were somehow comparable to her own behavior. Today the story took a different turn when a prankster emailed Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell, pretending to be Kushner himself, to ask how to handle some embarrassing “adult content” in his email. From Business Insider:

“Can I remove these?” the prankster asked…

“I need to see I think all emails between you and WH (just for me and us),” Lowell wrote. “We need to send any officials emails to your WH account. Not stuff like you asked about. None of those are going anywhere.”

“But we can bury it?” the prankster responded. “I’m so embarrassed. It’s fairly specialist stuff, half naked women on a trampoline, standing on legoscenes, the tag for the movie was #standingOnTheLittlePeople :(”

No doubt Lowell is embarrassed at having been fooled in this way (he refused to comment on the incident). One would think that lego porn would be a major hint something was amiss, but the good news is that Lowell didn’t say anything unethical or inappropriate even when he thought he was having a privileged conversation with his client. Had he said something like ‘Go ahead and delete it’ he might have created a real problem for his client.

As it is, some attorneys BI spoke to suggest the exchange proves Lowell hasn’t reviewed all of his client’s emails. But this exchanges introduces a new email supposedly forwarded from the White House, so maybe that’s what prompted Lowell’s comment about seeing “all emails between you and WH.”

This is not the first time White House staffers have been fooled by this particular email prankster. Last month CNN’s Jake Tapper outlined several similar instances including this exchange between the prankster, who was pretending to be Reince Priebus, and Anthony Scaramucci:

“I had promised myself I would leave my hands mud free,” wrote the fake Priebus, “but after reading your tweet today which stated how; ‘soon we will learn who in the media who has class, and who hasn’t’, has pushed me to this. That tweet was breathtakingly hypocritical, even for you. At no stage have you acted in a way that’s even remotely classy, yet you believe that’s the standard by which everyone should behave towards you? General Kelly will do a fine job. I’ll even admit he will do a better job than me. But the way in which that transition has come about has been diabolical. And hurtful. I don’t expect a reply.”

The very real Scaramucci responded: “You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured we were prepared. A Man would apologize.”

Fake Priebus wrote back: “I can’t believe you are questioning my ethics! The so called ‘Mooch’, who can’t even manage his first week in the White House without leaving upset in his wake. I have nothing to apologize for.”

Actual Scaramucci responded: “Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello. You are right there. My family is fine by the way and will thrive. I know what you did. No more replies from me.”